


The Family You Chose

by ShadowPorpoise



Series: Undertale AU Short Works [1]
Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: 2 chapters, Alternate Universe - Dreamtale (Undertale), Alternate Universe - Underswap (Undertale), Angst, Broken Families, Brotherly Angst, Brotherly Love, Brothers, Character Development, Childhood Trauma, Claustrophobia, Depression, Dialogue Heavy, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Enemies to Friends, Family Bonding, Family Drama, Family Feels, Flashbacks, Fluff and Angst, Friendship, Healing, Hopeful Ending, Hot Chocolate, Hugs, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Late Night Conversations, No Plot/Plotless, No Romance, Not Canon Compliant, Psychological Trauma, Short, Sibling Bonding, Siblings, Sleep Deprivation, Slice of Life, Stand Alone, Suicidal Thoughts, Trust Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-08
Updated: 2021-01-09
Packaged: 2021-03-12 11:22:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,931
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28634682
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShadowPorpoise/pseuds/ShadowPorpoise
Summary: “So.” Nightmare is beside him. “When you gonna show me where you stay?”Dream shoots him a questioning look, unsure if he can see it, and Nightmare sighs.“You know, that place you don’t call home.”-Dream and Nightmare have always thought they lived very different lives. Can they meet somewhere, in the middle?
Relationships: Blue & Nightmare, Dream & Nightmare, Nightmare & Everyone, Sans & Sans (Undertale), dream & blue, dream & everyone
Series: Undertale AU Short Works [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2175837
Comments: 2
Kudos: 81





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So, you may have seen that I started posting the beginning of this before as a sort of makeshift followup to a previous series I'd written, but in the end I decided to cut it loose. When I originally wrote the draft it was just a stand alone story, and that's the way it should stay. Thank you for understanding, and sorry for any confusion<3
> 
> Warnings in the tags.

Dream is claustrophobic.

Blue found out one day when he tried to keep him from leaving. He hadn’t slept in ages -wouldn’t say for exactly how long. Gave him that whole spiel about how he doesn’t need to sleep, guardians of feeling never _need_ to sleep after all, but Blue wasn’t fooled. He’s seen Dream do it before, that thing he calls _resting_ , and if that isn’t sleep Blue doesn’t know what is.

So he blocked the doorway. The front doorway, of his own house. And it’s not as though Dream couldn’t teleport out. Papy did that all the time, Papy was always doing that when Blue got on his case, when Blue cornered him and told him to _stop_ sleeping so much and get outside, get to work, get to _living_ or else he’d turn him out himself, and just see if he didn’t.

But Dream didn’t teleport. He didn’t do anything at all, only just went all sort of gray and shivering and not cold so that Blue thought he’d caught a fever right there in front of him and all at once. And he couldn’t even gloat about it, couldn’t even tell him, _See, I told you_ , he was so frightened, he was so worried and Dream wouldn’t even let him get close. Just backed right up into a corner with his head down in his hands, trembling and looking smaller than Blue had ever seen him. It wasn’t long before Blue realized he was trying to rest after all, and not at all peacefully - fists clenched, brow-bones furrowed in concentration as he sought to lose himself, to travel along those old, remembered paths of positivity without thought, without words or even his own feelings.

Blue stayed with him. Right there on the dining room floor, and waiting until he came back, or gave up going. He did, eventually. Letting out a sigh and easing his hands back down from his face. Golden eye-lights winked back into place, and Blue got close then, slowly, so that Dream didn’t fight him when he pulled him into his arms and wept, he was so sorry.

“Blue?” Dream’s voice, coming lost and muddled, and the sound of it enough for a fresh wave of sobs Blue had to hold in if he didn’t want to miss it. “Blue, it’s alright.” Because Dream is just like that, he’s got to be like that or he hasn’t done his job, he hasn’t made you happy and never mind that he isn’t.

Blue made him tea, then. Started asking, and not telling. At least for one day. And there was a lot to ask, really. He didn’t know, back then, why Dream was scared. Of locked doors and close walls. Of drifting off, and waking up. Of going out, and coming back.

But he was welcome - when he wanted, and when he didn’t. And though Dream didn’t need the doors, Blue didn’t lock them. He came back when he thought to, and not when he didn’t. Ink came with him too, once, and the three of them laughed until dawn, and not even a mention of sleep. Blue was the tiredest of the three by the end, and Papy pushing his forehead up off the table and laughing, too, asking who he was and what he’d done with his brother.

Blue and Papyrus had their own squabble at the front door, the first time Blue tried to leave with them. He thought he knew how Dream must’ve felt then, glaring up into his brother’s face, and the tears of fury building beneath his eye-lights. “You can’t stop me,” he said, though that wasn’t the point - it was never the point, and he realized that now. He let out a breath and ducked his head. “Papy, you’ve got to trust me.”

Over the years it got easier. They got used to it, all of them - the coming and going. The scares and the setbacks. The worry and the relief. The waiting and the hoping. Until one day when, after all this time, Blue thinks he’s seen everything. He’s heard everything. He's been everything that he needed to be and some that he didn’t, when a knock comes at the door.

A knock, when the keys were misplaced centuries ago. When even the most distant acquaintance knows they are welcome long before they turn the knob.

“Dream?” Blue opens the door a little further than the initial crack, lowering the glass he brought with him from the kitchen. “Why are you…” And then he sees. Just behind his friend and to the left.

His glass shatters on the hardwood floor.

* * *

Dream says he doesn’t have a place to go. Not any one particular place, anyway. Not that he calls _home_.

Nightmare is reluctant to use it either, that word. There is a place, though - even if he doesn’t like to talk about it. He’s afraid to talk about it, to care enough to talk about it or else something might happen and he won’t have anything to talk about. Even so, none of that could stop Dream from following him there, to the only safe haven he has left anymore within the multiverse.

It’s a cold and dark world, near the center. He thinks there must be a sun somewhere, up above the perpetual layer of clouds, but he’s never seen it.

It’s comforting. He is not the anomaly here; no singular, muddled shadow beneath a a fully illuminated sky. Everything is shadow, everything is noise and chaos and darkness and rain, and so he is at home. Or as home as he can ever be.

He hasn’t got a key. He thinks maybe he did once, but it’s good and lost now if he ever did. It’s a Sans house, probably. Or one like it. Huddled within the remnants of an old, reiterated genocide and failed erasure. Only this one has more rooms - empty ones, usually - and that suits Nightmare fine.

Cobwebs lurk in the corners, like the set off some cheap, gimmicky horror movie. Dust, on most surfaces. The faucet groans with earsplitting volume when you turn the handles so Nightmare doesn’t.

“I’d offer you some tea, but… you know how it is.” Old, truncated sentiments, conjured with contempt and spoken with a sneer. It’s a line they both know, that they’ve heard no doubt thousands of times before, and maybe that’s why Dream doesn’t laugh, doesn’t smile or even react at all, only just sort of stands there in the dining room and taking it all in.

Or else it’s just Nightmare. He’s not exactly known for making people smile. He shuffles on through dining room and into the living room, leaving tracks through the dust with a couple of drooping tentacles. “Coming?” he calls sharply at no trace of a step behind him, and looks back from his place upon the stairs.

Dream emerges tentatively from the doorway. The soft golden glow of his aura illuminates floating particles in the air. He sneezes, once, with a sound to rattle the windows before making his way over to the railing. “You live here alone?” he asks, looking up, and Nightmare scoffs a little, starting for the top again.

Dream follows him on his own this time, and Nightmare stops at the first door. Brushes it open with a couple of fingers. “There,” he says, like there’s anything there at all besides a dusty floor and an even dustier bed. He pauses a moment, watching as his brother steps in and turns to look back a him from a couple of paces inside.

Nightmare frowns. “Wait, are you still…? Hold on a second.”

He comes back with a light, one of the newer ones that still works, and sticks it into the power socket. All at once Dream isn’t glowing anymore, only squinting a little in the new light.

“There,” Nightmare says again, only he means it this time, before stepping back out into the hall. “If you need anything just call.” And he leaves him alone.

* * *

There’s a whole line of doors down the corridor. The wind beats tirelessly at the windows and Dream has no intention of resting. He doesn’t need to, anyway.

There’s a couple of pictures, hanging on the walls. Austere and darkened with age, he can barely make them out beyond the layers of filth. He soon gives up trying and examines the doors instead. They’re mostly ajar, with a couple of exceptions. Dim light filters out around the nearest one, and he can make out the words _Horror was here_ engraved in one of the frames.

A skittering of broken bones and dice and buttons, tumbling out through the dimly lit doorway.

“Nightmare?” But he knows that it isn’t. His brother’s aura usually masks whichever true emotions he might feel, and whatever lurks behind that door is experiencing more than just a few. Before he can fully grasp any one of them it recedes, walled off behind a flutter of untimely distractions and nerves.

Dream crouches down beside the door, watching as a small, bony hand emerges through the opening to scoop the fallen pieces back inside. He waits a moment, listening to the furtive shuffling from within. Then -

An eye. Crimson and cyan, smoldering through the crack. “You’re his brother, aren’t you?” The voice is scratchy and low.

Dream stares. Struck dumb, and rooted to the spot.

Blink. “Why hasn’t he killed you yet?” And it ducks back within the dimness, leaving behind yet another tumble of ivory trinkets.

Dream finds his voice. “Uhm… wait.” He presses open the door cautiously.

The room is sparsely furnished, and more thickly coated with dust than anywhere else in the house. A desk sits up against one wall, and huddled against the other is a figure, all in gray, and sort of slumped over on itself. A hood, drawn up over its face, and more broken bits all over the ground. He seems to be studying the floor intensely where they have fallen.

Dream is careful not to disturb them as he eases inside. There’s a clock on the desk, reading the wrong time and ticking loudly. “Uhm… you’re… you’re Dust Sans, aren’t you?”

He jumps a little, and Dream sees his face clearly or the first time, all gray terror and smokey panic. “DON’T!” And he dives for the bones, the dice, the buttons on the ground and yanks them back into a pile. “This is… This is _our_ room.”

“Oh. I’m sorry.” Dream backs up, so that his knees don’t cross the threshold. But he can’t sense any real intent to harm behind the hostility, the panicked fury emanating from the rigid form. “I’ll just… stay on this side then.”

Relief. Palpable and welcome, brimming through the room and out into the hallway like a beacon. The hooded skeleton closes his eyes, steeling himself before he takes another roll.

Dream watches him play for a while in silence - this strange, disordered game of chance. It isn’t until nearly midnight that Dream realizes he’s getting drowsy, tipped a little sideways in the doorway.

A clap of thunder straightens him up pretty quick, and helps him to break his promise as he jumps and stumbles a couple of inches into the room.

Dust doesn’t seem to notice that though, sitting very still and gazing up in the general direction of the sky. “Not time yet,” he mutters. Holding his head and rocking, rocking back and forth against the wall. “Not time yet, not time yet,” he mutters again, and gets up. Gets up and shuffles over to where Dream is toppled in the doorway. He stares down at him for a long, unseeing moment before reaching for the knob. “Not time yet,” he repeats, and shuts the door in Dream’s face.

* * *

Nightmare finds Dream in the kitchen after a few fruitless hours of tossing and turning. The scratchy sound of an old, favorite pair of slippers announces his presence.

“Hey,” he says, and meanders over to the cabinet. Dream is seated at the table and nursing a steaming mug of what has to be the worst instant hot chocolate in the multiverse, supplied from an unfinished canister curtesy of Nightmare can’t remember whom. It’s a wonder the milk hasn’t gone sour, since that’s clearly what Dream used, and left it on the counter like a kid.

Rain now pelts the windows with renewed fervor, and Nightmare can’t help snatching a glance at his brother when from outside comes yet another low rumble of thunder. But Dream doesn’t move. Only slowly, stiffly raises that mug to his mouth, eyes focused down and on nothing in particular. Nightmare huffs a little and rummages around in the cabinet. Whatever Dream might say about sleeping and not needing to, Nightmare figures it’s only ever been an excuse to stay up for hot chocolate like they do in old children’s books. Not that Dream ever read any.

Nightmare heats the water and comes back over, heaving one foot up onto the nearest dining room chair and staring out the darkened window.

Gradually there’s a sniff, then a cleared throat from the place across from him. “You shouldn’t… make it that way.”

Nightmare glowers into his mug. Studies it. Lifts it back up to his mouth and takes a sip. “Figured you’d be up,” he says conversationally, and eyes his brother with that single, piercing blue eyelight.

Dream hunches a little, grasping his mug a little tighter and that’s when Nightmare notices the shaking. “You ever… check on him? Your friend, upstairs.”

“My…” Nightmare pauses, taking a moment to examine closely the flutter of emotions emanating from the room upstairs. “Oh. Yeah, he’s pretty particular about his space.Why, you try to go into his room or something?” He’s grinning a little, and not able to help it.

Dream is angry. Nightmare doesn’t need to bypass the shallow pulse of his aura to see that. “Yeah, well, I think he needs somebody in his space. He looks awful.”

Sigh. “Listen, Dream. You wanna mess with people’s feelings do it on your own turf, okay? That’s not why people come here.”

Dream opens his mouth. Closes it. Looks away. “Why do they come here?” he asks quietly and Nightmare softens. Just a little. It’s a new feeling - or rather, a very old one. He’s not used to it anymore, and hasn’t quite figured out what to do with it, when it comes.

“Dream, you know…” Nightmare swallows the last bit of his drink and fiddles with the cup. “There are probably a lot of worlds out there that aren’t storming right now.”

Dream turns again and for a long moment they stare at each other. Listening to the dull, forlorn hum from the overhead light, the rain on the windows, the fresh rumblings of thunder in the distance. Then -

“I know,” he says, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world, and Nightmare lets it go.

* * *

In a little while there’s a creak from the front door, and raised voices coming in. Nightmare is in the kitchen on a stool pulled up to the countertop, reading a book. He doesn’t look up.

Dream doesn’t move as they enter - a few he recognizes, and some he doesn’t. The one with the gaping hole in his head is Horror, and grinning at another that Dream has never seen before. Rainbow jacket and snazzy lenses, a gold-toothed grin and unassuming swagger before the other gets him in a headlock and knuckles the top of his hat.

“Come on guys, break it up,” comes a haunting, ghostly sort of singsong as a pale, almost stately figure brushes past them, a trail of crimson scarf behind him. There’s blood streaking from one corner of his mouth and he’s got a stack of cards in his hand. “Any of you see the other deck I left last time?”

“Nope.” This last from a surly, jagged toothed Fell Sans with one hand stuffed in his pocket. He’s holding the door open for somebody and before Dream can get a good look at either of them the others have crowded around, taking up their places at the table without even a glance at him and arguing loudly over who dealt last.

“Think it was the parasite.” Horror’s still got said parasite in a headlock at the table, though Dream can see he’s only half-heartedly trying to escape.

“Geez, you sure you don’t wanna let me go now, yo?” he gets out, and Horror laughs uproariously.

“Come on. I haven’t got a soul left worth to threaten me over,” he grumbles, but lets him go.

“We’ll just have to work with one. Red, you in?” Geno is smoothly dealing out the deck into five piles on the table.

Fell shuffles over from the other room. Stops, stock still in the doorway. “ _Hey._ ” He can barely get the words out around his shock. “What the _funk_? Who’s the weirdo golden dude?”

They turn on Dream then for the first time, and Geno furrows a brow bone at him. “Oh. So sorry, didn’t realize we had a newcomer. Here, I’ll just…” And he’s dealing out one card after another, to equal up with others.

“Hey, man, that’s cheating. You gotta re-deal or it ain’t fair.” Fresh is reaching for the deck.

“ _No!_ ” Fell is still stuttering in the doorway with one finger jabbing at the guardian. “That’s… That’s _Dream,_ you idiots.”

“Oh.” Geno lets Fresh have the cards.

“Wait a minute.” Fell glances, dumfounded, into the kitchen as he is jostled out of the way from behind. “You _know_ about this, Gooplord?”

“Yep.” Nightmare turns a page without looking at him.

A low, sticky rattle. Dream might have found his voice again by now but for the new, massive figure approaching through the doorway. A tangle of limbs and sagging eye sockets, melted teeth and oozing joins, the creature leers at him from two different faces and it’s all Dream can do remain in his place. As it is he drops his cup, sending a splatter of cold, goopy liquid out over the dining room table.

“Oh, for crying out loud.” Nightmare has finally shut his book and arisen, reaching for a roll of yellowing paper towels. He steps over to his brother’s chair to swab up the mess with Horror reaching to help silently and Geno shooting worried, almost concerned looks in Dream’s direction.

“Relax, he won’t hurt you,” he mutters as Nightmare finishes and stands back, businesslike and satisfied. “He just looks a little different, that’s all. Kinda like the rest of us.”

Sixbones eases down onto one of the chairs near the far end of the table, rattling apologetically. Fresh is dealing this time, into seven piles.

Nightmare glances at him on the way back to the kitchen. “Hey. You know I’m not playing, right?”

“I gotcha, fam. This is for Dust, if he shows.”

“Dust?”

They all go still and silent when Dream speaks for the first time.

He clears his throat. “I mean, he comes down?”

Fresh resumes dealing and Fell comes to the table as the others pick up their cards. “Aw, yeah, man, he’s real good at this stuff.”

As if on cue Dust appears beside Sixbones, easing down before the seventh pile. He looks tired but his face is clear, and none of the crazed light in his eyes from before.

“There he is, there he is!” This from Horror, lunging across to slap the far end of the table and sending a cloud of dust up into his face. “Best pokerface in the multiverse.”

“We ain’t playing poker,” Fell grumbles, spreading out his hand. “Not after what happened last time.”

“What happened?” Dream can’t stop himself from asking, and Geno rolls his eyes.

“Not that old story again.”

Horror cackles maniacally and leans over the table. “Listen bud, Red’s about the sanest one here and even he was pitching a fit when Dust cleaned him out.”

“Was rigged,” Red snaps shortly. “And that’s all I’m gonna say.”

From the far end of the table comes another loud rattle like a laugh and a startled squawk as Sixbones slings one melty arm around Dust’s neck and rubs his head with the other. Seems to be a common practice around here. Gooey bone residue comes away on Dust’s hood but he doesn’t seem to mind. He seems to almost smile a little, and Dream thinks he’s holding onto his companion, too, even as he puts on a show of pulling away.

“Tch.” Horror starts putting his cards in order, grinning like a cat. “Alright, I’ll start.” He turns to Red. “Got any threes, cupcake?”

A sudden surge of rage and Fell flings the cards at him. “You peeked!”

Geno puts his head in his hands. “Come on guys, it’s too soon for this.”

But Horror is cackling again as he gathers them up off the floor. “This is too easy,” he chortles, and Dream watches as he lays down four cards, face down on the table. “What about you, sugar, got any fives?” he says, turning to Geno, who shakes his head and says, “Fish.”

“Uhm… I do,” Dream offers tentatively and holds them out.

Silence. Then the room erupts into uproarious laughter and Nightmare is staring at him from the kitchen with the most disgusted expression Dream thinks he’s ever seen, and that’s saying a lot.

“Gotta love this guy,” Geno chuckles, putting an arm around him, and Dream flushes at his own stupidity.

“I’m sorry, I… I’ve never played poker before.”

More laughter, all but deafening this time. “Where’d you find him, Gooplord?” Horror bellows, and Dream wants to disappear. “Should’ve brought him here a lot sooner.”

Nightmare shrugs and turns back to his book. “Maybe.”

* * *

Nightmare rescued him after about an hour, saying the storm had passed if he wanted to get some air. Dream was only too happy to oblige, following him out into the dark beneath the dripping eaves.

“So… Gooplord?”

“Ahah.” Dream can barely make him out in the dimness, only the faint, oily sheen and flashing teeth. But he seems uncomfortable. “I don’t know who came up with that.”

Dream doesn’t press him.

“Watch your step.” The sound of swishing tentacles both behind and to one side tells Dream that his brother is taking care he doesn’t fall. The ground is a little uneven, and he stumbles more than once, even as Nightmare treads with practiced ease on familiar ground.

“Your friends are nice,” Dream tells him after a while, once he’s got his footing. “Do they live here, with you?”

“No.” Nightmare doesn’t turn. “They stay over, sometimes, if they want to. And not just the ones you saw.” Pause. “The door is always open.” He seems to think he has finished, and picks up the pace a little.

The air is cold; it clings to them like fog.

“Well - ” Dream is struggling to keep up. “Are they - I mean, you never mentioned them before.”

“You never asked.” Curt, but true. And, “I don’t like involving other people in our issues.”

He didn’t say much. And he didn’t imply anything, really, by what he did. But still it stings. “Probably could’ve won long ago, if you did,” Dream mutters, but Nightmare doesn’t argue or concede. He is silent for so long that Dream wonders if he heard him. Then -

“They’ve been through enough.”

 _They_ have? And that stings worst of all, that he should consider their feelings, their ability to endure when he’s tested Dream’s countless times before and never once took thought of what _he’d_ been through. 

“They come here when they need a break. Or a transition, to another life.“ Nightmare starts speaking again on his own, oblivious to the words within Dream’s silence. “I’m not sure when it first started. Only that the word spread, of a place where you could... heal. Or not. Without judgement, for your crimes.”

At what price of admission? Dust? LV?

Nightmare has stopped. Dream doesn’t realize until he walks into him and gets a face full of goop. It runs off harmlessly, repelled by his own aura. “They come and go,” Nightmare continues, gazing off into the distance. “Some of them, like Dust, stay longer than others. But in the end he’ll leave like the rest.”

Dream studies the dim, unreadable outline in the darkness. “And that’s okay with you?” he asks, and his voice comes small choked.

Nightmare turns. Blinks that giant blue eye-light at him. “Does it matter? It’s what they do.”

Dream looks away. Turns around, on his own, and starts back. Carefully, without the help of waiting tentacles if he falls.

“So.” Nightmare is beside him. “When you gonna show me where you stay?”

Dream shoots him a questioning look, unsure if he can see it, and Nightmare sighs.

“You know, that place you don’t call home.”


	2. Chapter 2

Blue is washing the dishes. He always washes the dishes when he’s upset. It’s why Papy never got a dish washer. Too much stress.

He doesn’t need to turn to know that Ink is there. “I take it this is your fault,” he grumbles, slamming a plate down in the drainer and leaning heavily on the counter for a moment. “Had to go and be all… supportive.”

It’s not fair. Neither one of them would hesitate even a moment to do what was necessary to make Dream happy. Not that they get many chances. Or that either one of them would take it back, if they did.

Still. He wants someone to blame. He grabs for the steel wool. “I knew they made up.” Scrub, scrub. “I knew they wanted to…get along.” More scrubbing. Sigh. “I just… never thought I’d see him. Not here. Not like this.”

Ink steps quietly over to the counter. Picks up a dish out of the drainer, and towels it dry.

Blue watches him. Resisting the urge to advise, to critique the way he does it. “I mean… we can’t just act like nothing’s happened, can we?”

Ink is silent. But Blue knows that Ink hears him. That he hears and remembers every word ever spoken to him, regardless of how it might appear when he fiddles for the notes on that scarf.

Dream is trying to give him space, or else just avoiding him, which is more likely. He’s left their guest alone in the living room and gone up stairs, leaving Blue to hide in the kitchen. And didn’t he just pick a night when Papy was working on purpose?

Dream is scared of Papy. Everyone is scared of Papy. And no one is scared of Blue.

“Well, I still say you could’ve stopped it,” he mutters, taking up the dishrag again. “You’re the one who’s with him all the time.”

“Not really.” It’s sudden. The first reply. Hanging clear and expressionless in the abruptly silent kitchen - because Blue listens when Ink speaks, too.

The eccentric little creator reaches for the next dish in the drainer, towels it off, and sets it in the cabinet before he finishes. “He does things on his own, mostly.”

Blue turns back to the task at hand, scrubbing at a particularly stubborn stain. “You’re right about that,” he snaps when it finally comes off. “And then he… comes back looking like... And I’m supposed to…”

A silent, awkward hug from one side. Blue can’t help but laugh a little as his friend tries, stiffly, communicate in a way he thinks Blue will understand.

“Alright,” he teases, patting Ink’s shoulder with a sudsy hand and laughing as he recoils. “I’ll do my best. Right?”

But Ink is pretending not to listen again, wiping at his sleeve.

* * *

Nightmare was behaving himself rather well, alone in the living room, when he was confronted by a series of sharp, needle-like pains at the end of one tentacle. Still, he takes care there are no sudden moves, no brash decisions that could be misunderstood when he yanks it up, away from the floor, and with it the most annoying of all Annoying Cats, latched on like a dangling fish from a hook.

Nightmare reaches, carefully, the hold the thing up so he can remove the miniature talons with minimal damage. Even so, there are several sizable gouges within his flesh when he’s done, and no remorse whatsoever from the cat, which flicks its tail irritably from where he’s holding it out at a considerable distance from his body.

“What a… _cute_ cat,” he gets out through gritted teeth, since someone might be listening, and sets it back down, gingerly, on the floor.

…To which it immediately pounces for another tentacle, only narrowly missing the mark when he yanks it out of reach. After all he’s already got fur stuck to the other one, and to his hands - not to mention the open wounds. Still, after a moment’s consideration, Nightmare impulsively dangles another tentacle within reach, only to yank it up at the last minute again and watch the thing swat at it, rolling over onto its back and turning its head.

Ink finds him sitting on the living room floor with the Annoying Cat all curled up in his lap and purring.

The squid watches him, wide-eyed and leaning over the back of one chair. Nightmare isn’t sure what to say. After all, he never had to worry about carrying a conversation the few times he fought him. In the end though, Ink speaks first.

“That cat hates me,” he says tonelessly.

“Yeah?” Nightmare frowns.

Ink nods, still staring.

“…Okay.”

Ink nods again and leaves.

* * *

The bedroom door is open, but Blue knocks anyway. They would’ve had another room put in, maybe up over the garage, only Dream told them not to. Didn’t make much sense, really. Not when he leaves all the time without a sign, and not a word of coming back. Blue never knows, from one day to the next, whether or when they’ll see each other again.

He’s here now, though, and rubbing at his eyes. Blue _did_ put a cot in for him, whether he wanted it or not. Whether he _needed_ it or not, and look there, he’s sitting on it now, and pretending not to have been lying down.

“You make hot chocolate?” he asks, a little too quickly, and takes his hands down from his eyes. They’re swollen, a bit.

Blue gives him a look that indicates very clearly he has no intention of indulging that particular habit before dinner. He edges a little further into the room and to one side. He’s always careful, not to stand between Dream and the door. “So… What have you been up to?” he asks, a little tensely.

That trace of a smile, like he knows. “Was hoping you could tell me.”

Dream is always like that, waiting for someone else, anyone else to approve or disapprove of what he does. And then to do it anyway.

Blue flops down on his own bed across from him, feet dangling up over the floor. “What’s going on?” He repeats, a bit more gently this time. “You left your guest alone down there, you know. Making friends with the cat.”

“What, really?” Dream’s eyes widen as he sits forward.

Blue’s mouth twists despite himself. “Yeah. Yeah, think the last time I saw him he had… left you for dead, a couple of worlds away. Something like that.”

Dream deflates just as quickly as Blue intended him to. It was a bad day. Blue still remembers the fear, the helpless horror that overtook him at Dream’s slowly dwindling HP. And his first words, when he finally woke up - _Is he alright? You didn’t chase after him, did you?_ Eyes wide and pleading as he searched Ink’s face, then Blue’s - more cautiously. Never mind they’d almost bought it themselves, in trying to get him out.

“There’s a lot of stuff you don’t… see,” he says now, and he sounds older. He is older, really, by a great deal more than Blue usually remembers.

And all at once Blue wants to believe it, to trust in all the things Dream says he hasn’t seen, to imagine what they’d change in his perception. His voice is low when eventually he finds it in himself to answer. “What I do see… hurts me.” And he knows it even as he says it, it’s the worst and most devastating thing that he could have said, that Dream has hurt rather than helped him - or anyone - like he’s supposed to.

But Dream doesn’t crumble. Doesn’t cry, or tell him he’s sorry. Doesn’t try to leave, or make himself smaller. Instead his face is pinched and set like flint when he raises it, and looks Blue dead in the eye. “Blue, I…,” he starts, and not a quiver in his voice. “I don’t want to have to ask this anymore. I never wanted to. But…” And this last bit is hard, almost too hard to get out around his pride. “I need your help. With this. Both of you. So I don’t… make the same mistakes.”

And that’s cheating, really, to ask for it outright like that when they both know Blue never once hesitated to give it. Even so, Dream never has asked for it before, and maybe that’s the point.

* * *

Ink has the places set for when they get down. Nightmare brings the cat to the table, to which, by some miracle, Blue manages to abstain from objecting. Dream thinks Nightmare gives it the majority of his dinner. It’s easier, probably, for him to focus on it, rather than the others. To take care of it, rather than himself. He always was good at that.

Blue is a bully about cleaning up after, all but yanking the dishes out of Dream’s hands when he goes to help. Truthfully, he wouldn’t have tried but for the look Nightmare gave him last night over the milk.

“I’ve _got_ it, I said. What, you trying to avoid something you’d be better off doing?” Blue glares pointedly and Dream splutters, embarrassed.

“No, I just thought - ”

“Well, think again. I know you’re not in here to talk to me so why don’t you just get out.”

Meant, most likely, as nothing more than a huffy request, the words carry an unexpected sting. And perhaps Blue wouldn’t even have realized it but for the sudden, piercing gaze shot at him from the kitchen doorway. A vague shadow seems to spread out over the linoleum floor, and they all sort of shrink under its scrutiny. Even the cat wriggles out of Nightmare’s arms and bolts.

Dream releases the plate he was holding and backs up. He knows that look, and he doesn’t like it. “Night? What… what’s up?”

“Nothing.” But he’s still staring, at Blue.

The little swap skeleton shrugs and turns back to the sink with pointed nonchalance. “Ink can help me dry. Don’t worry about it.”

Ink, who usually stays far out of the way when they bicker, eases back out of the corner where he’d been lurking. Nods a little too convincingly at Dream and picks up a towel.

Dream takes his brother into the other room.

* * *

“So, uh… what’s up with that dude?”

Dream doesn’t need to ask who he means. He reaches for one of those squishy pillows they always keep on the couch and hugs it where he’s seated, crosslegged, at one end. “You mean Blue? He’s always like that.”

Nightmare snorts. “Like what, a controlling asshole?” He’s on the floor at the other side with one elbow braced lazily on the cushions.

Dream starts to be indignant. But Ink left some time ago, and Blue went up to bed, so… Dream can’t seem to fight the giggles.

“What is so funny?” And Night is genuinely mad, like not just play mad and Dream can only giggle harder.

“He’s not, he’s not, he just worries about me. He really doesn’t mean to - I mean, I don’t always… take care of myself.” And he’s not laughing anymore, suddenly, even though Nightmare’s looked away and sort of sneering. “Night, don’t… get all worked up about this, okay, it’s fine. We set up boundaries, and… he’s working on it. He helped me through a lot.”

A lot of… what? It’s in Nightmare’s face, the question, only he doesn’t ask it. It isn’t time - not now, nor when he eventually does get up the nerve, after things have long since dwindled into one of those incoherent, late night conversations where neither one of them knows what they’re going to say before they say it and everything is funny.

“Don’t!” Dream gasps in a moment of sudden, lucid horror as Nightmare takes a sip of hot chocolate, which Dream did eventually make, while still hunching over the couch cushions. “Blue will kill me if you spill it.”

“Relax. He’s going to kill you anyway, since you used the kitchen on your own.”

And that’s too much, Dream is spraying chocolate out his nose and trying not to cry. “Stop, stop, you’ll make me spill too,” he pleads, trembling with laughter.

“Nah, I mean, I get why you’re like this now, five hundred years old and he treats you like a baby.”

Dream wipes at his eyes, saying nothing and trying to calm down.

Nightmare watches him. Sets his cup down on the floor. “Hey, uh… Dream? What did you mean earlier? About… going through stuff.”

Dream looks up with the laughter still frozen in his eyes. His face moves like he’s going to speak, but in the end he just takes another sip of hot chocolate and something about the movement is strange, like he’s trying to hide something when he says, “Nothing like what you did.” And winks, like Nightmare is the baby here and doesn’t need to know.

“This isn’t about me,” Nightmare tells him suddenly, stiffly, and realizes it’s the first time in a long while that he doesn’t want it to be.

Dream sets his cup down and looks just about anywhere but at him. He searches all corners of the room for an answer, but instead he comes back with a question. “Night, do… do you ever think that if I hadn’t been there, you would’ve… I mean, it would’ve been easier?”

And Nightmare can see it now, in every line of his face, the shadows beneath his eyes. Because however used he might be to sensing the emotions of others he hasn’t forgotten yet how to read them, when he needs to. The stress, the disappointment, the guilt, the lack of _sleep_ over it all like a an exacerbating, self-inflicted torture. Dream is fading fast, like a graying, exhausted shadow of what he pretends to be though he never let him see. He never let anyone see, before, except maybe Blue and now he’s answered.

Nightmare gets up. Steps over to where Dream is perched on the arm of the couch and refusing to look at him. Nightmare isn’t very good at this. But words never worked with Dream. He never believed them, never treasured them the way Nightmare did when he poured over his books. People say a lot of things, don’t they, and Dream is used to to it, to the politeness and pleasantries and hollow reassurances - he makes them every day, after all. So Nightmare is silent when he reaches for him, and Dream doesn’t move so much as sag into his arms.

It’s a long while before Dream even gives a sign that he has noticed. But gradually Nightmare becomes aware that he is hugging him back, sort of. Weakly, at best. And, “I want to wake up,” he says, so quietly that Nightmare isn’t sure he heard it. “I want to wake up so badly.” And then he falls asleep.

* * *

He’s drifting far away without a care in the world when Blue comes back down in his pajamas. Nightmare sits there crosslegged on the floor in front to the couch, glancing up lazily from a magazine Blue forgot was there.

“Did he fall asleep?” he whispers, stunned and trying to tiptoe.

What’s it look like, idiot, Nightmare wants to say. But, “Yeah,” he says instead, since that works just as well. Better, maybe.

Blue does a sort of ecstatic, giddy twirl on his way into the kitchen, pumping his fists and cheering silently. He returns with a bowl and a bag of chips, which he thankfully opened in the other room, and bounces over to flip the tv on. “I never can get him to sleep,” he singsongs under his breath, and flops down beside Nightmare on the floor, a little too close for comfort.

Nightmare rolls his eyes and pretends to be absorbed in his article, which is something on making healthy snacks. Blue crunches loudly beside him, upending the bag into the bowl and grinning to himself. He feels genuinely happy, and maybe that’s what prompts Nightmare, hesitantly, to break his silence. “I couldn’t usually… get him to before, either.”

At his first word Blue is listening, focused and intent in a way that almost makes Nightmare too embarrassed to continue. “Like…” He fiddles with the corner of a page. “Sometimes I’d get angry when he… couldn’t sit still, and listen to me. ‘Cause I liked to read. Aloud.” It sounds stupid. Childish, and he looks away.

“Papy likes to read aloud, too. Or - I like him to.”

For a long, stunned moment Nightmare doesn’t trust himself to speak. Because with just a few short words Blue has given him something he would have never dared to ask for. “Yeah,” he gets out at last, and sounding stupider by the minute. “Yeah, so… so he would only stop moving when it was dark, and he couldn’t see well enough to do anything. I think he… I think he felt better, when he was doing things.”

Blue nods knowingly and pops another chip into his mouth, turning his gaze back to the screen. It’s easier to continue, when he’s looking away.

“But I didn’t like that. When he… got scared, so I would just try and get him to sleep.”

“Huh. You really are similar.”

“What?” Nightmare stiffens, startled.

Blue shrugs. “Both so convinced you’re self absorbed when all you think of is each other.”

Nightmare frowns. Turns, unseeing back to the page. “Don’t think anyone else… thought we were similar.”

Blue knows the basics of what happened at the tree - enough to understand that last bit, if only a little. “Self awareness is important,” he says matter-of-factly. “I’ve always thought that if you’re overcome with something irrationally negative, the main thing is the recognize, not smother it. Otherwise it festers.”

It’s kind of hilarious that Blue is lecturing him on negative emotions and how to process them. Or not. “Really,” he inquires dryly, turning the page at last and actually reading it, this time.

Blue turns and studies him silently. “Yeah. So then you can work through it without letting it hurt people.”

“You talk like you know. Scared he’s gonna leave for good now, is that it? That he won’t need you anymore?”

Blue doesn’t look away. Doesn’t flinch or backpedal. “So is this how things are gonna be now?” he asks. And the room seems to grow colder. “I mean, are you guys chill and stuff?” His tone, or lack of it, belies the casual nature of his words.

“That’s none of your business.” But what was meant to sound like a snarky retort comes out with something dangerously close to genuine irritation.

Blue shrugs again, with all the appearance of one completely at ease, and turns back to the tv like it’s the most interesting thing in the room. “I mean… it sorta is my business, actually. Since, you know… you kinda ditched. For like… five hundred years. Only after, like, imprisoning him for the first third of it. And since I’m the one who’s gotta pick up the pieces when things inevitably go south, I’d kinda like to know what you’re thinking is all gonna happen.”

Nightmare gapes. Very few have dared to talk to him that way, and never without paying for it. Certainly not without some planned line of self defense, and maybe that’s why he finds himself strangely lacking in reaction. He’s not even that angry, no matter how he tries to be. “There’s a lot of things you don’t know anything about,” he says shortly, and without much heat. He doesn’t have any real need to defend himself, after all.

“Could say the same to you,” comes the quick reply, and that _does_ smart. A lot.

They don’t say anything more for a while. Nightmare has no intention of saying anything more at all, after that, when finally Blue looks at him again. Neon blue eye-lights in the near darkness. He’s smiling a little, in the glow off the tv screen. “Look, I didn’t come down here to talk to you about that. We all know it’s dwelling on the past that’s messed him up so much in the first place. I just… wanted to make sure. That you were trying. Because… Because I don’t think he could take much more… of the same.”

Neither one of them could. Dream stirs a little behind him on the couch, and Nightmare absently reaches back to pull the blanket up.

The past is everywhere. In every instinct, and every feeling. In every thought, and every word. He can’t always control it, the times when he remembers. When he remembers so badly he can’t stop, the repeating and the forgetting. Reliving old hurts over and over again like some sort of twisted lullaby.

So he can’t promise, that he won’t think of it. The good, and the bad. That he won’t act on it, at all the worst and best times. It’s the only reason he even cares, after all.

Blue is still waiting for an answer. Well, maybe this is the answer, the only one he’s gonna get, and he’s not ready to accept it. “So, yeah,” he sighs, and offers him the chip bowl.

Nightmare doesn’t really want any, but he takes it anyway. Because that makes it easier to say, “Thanks.” For a lot of things.

* * *

When Dream comes to himself it’s nearly morning according to the clock on the tv and the soft, cold light filtering in through the curtains. Blue and Nightmare are giggling hysterically, at what he isn’t sure. There is some kind of a cartoon on so maybe that’s it, though the volume is so low he can hardly hear it. He feels strangely light, like a weight he never knew existed has been lifted from his shoulders. After some consideration he sits up. Eases down silently, to sit between them on the floor.

“Well, look at you, sleepyhead.” Blue grins at him, and Nightmare shoots him a look.

“How long have you been awake?”

But Dream just shakes his head. Reaches for the chip bowl, which by some miracle isn’t empty.

“Oh, this next is a good one,” Blue says, and shushes them excitedly.

It’s different, this time, when Dream tries to stay awake. He sits back a little, drowsily, listening to the sound of hushed laughter and letting the warmth, the comfort of it all wash over him in waves. Neither seems half bad now, the sleeping or the waking, and he can’t decide which one.

Oh well. There’s more than time enough for both.

**Author's Note:**

> Huge thank you to my friend [Queezle](https://quezq.tumblr.com/post/640856012272926720/for-shadowporpoises-amazing-fic-the-family-you) for creating the beautiful artwork at the end <3
> 
> This story began when I started rambling/free writing some of my thoughts late at night to said friend in DM. It seems suitable that it should end here, even as just a snapshot of what things will be like for these guys as time goes on. Thank you all so much for reading <3


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